I Dream of It, Sometimes
by Kitty in a Cornfield
Summary: Mary thinks about what life could have been like...and why she can't bring herself to want it.


This is what happens when I pull an all nighter and have no idea what to do with my time. I really don't know where this came from-I just started writing and this sort of came out. Honestly, though, I liked exploring Mary a little bit. I'm equal parts wanting to slap her sometimes and thinking that she got kind of a raw deal. But I also started writing this and heard the ending to the story in my head...and I really wanted to write those last few lines about Mary and Abe. Review if you like it.

 **I Dream of It Sometimes**

 **by Kitty in a Cornfield**

"I dream of it sometimes." The words hung in the icy midnight air as if they had been frozen in place and Mary herself could hardly believe she had said them. If she hadn't been lying in bed in the darkness, her back turned to Abraham, she was certain that she could never have said them at all.

"Dream of what?" Abraham asked with an edge of impatience. It had been a long day, entertaining Major Hewlett, and felt like it had been an even longer night as he'd argued with Mary. All he wanted, in that moment, was to sleep.

"Of what it would be like, had I married Thomas." It grew colder in the room then, with the silence that followed that statement. Abe's brother was a topic not often discussed between them, or the lives they may have lived had Thomas not died in the riot that night. Mary had only met him once, a brief encounter that hardly gave her the time to learn what kind of man she would marry. In those moments, however, she felt at peace with her father's choice of husband—he seemed a kind, honorable man. He was certainly the kind of man that she could grow to love. It was unthinkable that he should be taken away from her so quickly, and even more so that Abe would soon take his place.

Abe could hardly breathe when he heard Mary's words. For Abe, the events that had led to Thomas' death were too painful to consider too often and too personal for him to share. More than that, however, was the distance that was always between Abe and Mary, the barrier he couldn't let himself cross. He had left behind the life he had always expected to live, the love that he had always expected to have, and chosen familial obligation to assuage his guilt over his brother's death and try to honor the life that Thomas could have lived. Everything from before that decision, all of the parts of Abraham, felt too personal to share…too caught up in past affections and longing for a life that he chose not to live. He had married Mary, but he did not share his life with her. "And?"

It took Mary time to consider her words, to untangle them from the mixture of sadness and emptiness she'd felt since over the death of Thomas. It was a difficult thing, she thought, to be certain that your life would happen in one way—in a way that you hadn't even chosen—and then to lose that certainty, that future that you had believed was yours, and have it replaced with another. Sometimes she had been haunted by the question of whether, had she been given the choice, she would have married a Woodhull at all. To imagine that life was too much for her, though, and it was only recently, as she'd felt Abraham grow apart from her and seen his affection for Anna Strong, that she'd begun to wonder how her life would have been had Thomas lived and they'd been married as planned.

"We'd live here, at Whitehall," she said at last. "He'd work with your father." At that, Abe felt himself smile as he thought of his brother.

Thomas had been a terrible businessman, Abe knew, and thought back on his brother's well-meaning efforts to help with their fathers' business of selling goods. There were the account books that he'd tallied incorrectly, the time he'd tried to barter a deal and been swindled out of five hogs by a buyer, or the time that Thomas had panicked in the middle of a negotiation, frozen by fear. Or, Abe remembered Thomas describing it, frozen in awe at the sight of Mary. She wasn't wrong, he supposed. Thomas could have lived that life…he could have been happy, if he'd married her.

"We would have two sons." Mary continued. "One to name for your father…and one to name for you." It hurt to speak of that life, to say things that were so difficult and had been unspoken for so long. "We would have been happy." She knew in her heart, as she spoke the words, that they were true. She and Thomas could have loved each other and shared a wonderful life and home together, and a family. It was a life that could have been, that she thought on sometimes when she felt Abraham pull away from her—but it was not her life…and she couldn't bring herself to wish that it had been. " _But he wouldn't have been you_ …"

The words were barely a whisper, spoken so quietly that the very silence of the room seemed to drown them out, but Abe could still hear them. He swallowed, trying to fight emotions that he refused to let show. There was no doubt to him that Mary had come to love him. She had cared for him, supported him; she'd tried to help him when she'd discovered his codebook and she had covered up Ensign Baker's death and blamed it on Ben's men. All that Mary truly wanted was to love Abraham.

But Abe's heart would always belong to Anna.

 **P.S. Was this too repetitive? It felt repetitive to me...but that could be because I'm so tired...**


End file.
